The Doctor in Private Practice

On a bitter winter night, a young doctor and his guest sit beside a lamp in a country clinic. Across the street stands a ruined brewery. As the room warms, the doctor begins to talk: about medical school, army service, the war, and the ambitions that once seemed to promise a different life.

His memories move from comic evasions of discipline to the suffering of wounded soldiers, from a beautiful moonlit garden to the hospital where a devoted nurse becomes the object of gossip. Beneath his candid account of mistakes and regrets lies a more difficult story of dependence, desire, and obligations he cannot bring himself to fulfill.

Nagatsuka Takashi turns an apparently ordinary conversation into a searching portrait of compromised sympathy. This complete new English translation preserves the five original sections and the closing publication attribution, with notes on historical military ranks, family customs, place names, and uncertain readings.